All posts by Ragnarokz

I am the Managing Director of the Balfour Institute of Internet Culture, and one of the world's foremost experts on the cultural phenomena of the Internet.
Electronic Entertainment, Star Citizen

Star Citizens and Transparency

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One of the biggest complaints of Star Citizens, is the total lack of transparancy, as a backer, I have no clue, not even a single clue at all, about what Cloud Imperium Games have been spending money on.

All am hearing is something about mocap studioes, bizare really, who the hell still uses FMVs in Video Games? Other than EA Los Angeles for Command and Conquer, and that’s only because it’s tradition. It’s in-engine cutscenes these days lads, much cooler to watch, no loading screens either.

For all we know, Star Citizens burned 100 million US$ on Motion Capture equipment, a CryEngine license and big celebrities for some shitty storyline.

That’s it, that’s all we know, other than the laughable “Alpha”, which CIG now problaim is a “substantial” chunch of the promised game, despite the Alpha being limited to 16 people per server, has issues with the frames per second when someone shots at something in the other corner of the solar system and doesn’t have functional aiming.

That’s right, using CryEngine, an engine literally build for First Person Shooting, CIG has somehow managed to break the aim of the guns.

Impressive isn’t it? And due to the total lack of transparency, we have no idea what’s going on, why they relocate studioes, why is Sandi Gardiner, a failed Z-list actress even remotely involved with any of this?

Compared to Frontier, a publically traded company, where we can all just go to the “investor” section, and download a copy of their Financial report, and tada, all the transparency you could ever want.

I can’t imagine this kind of nonsense can carry on for much longer, and not just for StarCitizens, for Kickstarter and Crowd-funding in general.

At some point, some large-scale Crowdfuncing fails completely, and the politicians in Europe notices, and EU politcs have a tendency to be less “Sucking the teat of Wall Street” and more “Wait, we’re fucking Socialists/Populists, FUCK YOU, we need to get reelected”, so Consumer Rights will punch through at some point.

All we need is the failure.

Electronic Entertainment, Games, Star Citizen

Star Citizens and refunds.

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Cloud Imperium Games (Cloud Imperium Games)

Dec 20, 14:32

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your patience with this ticket.

We have reviewed your account status and regret that we are not able to accommodate your request for a refund since it was received outside of the statutory 14 day period.

Your pledge was made as part of the crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the development of “Star Citizen.” As such you were aware that the funds would be actively applied after receipt for this purpose, not idly maintained in a bank account, and therefore could not be subject to a refund once used. As you may know from the extensive information on our website Robertsspaceindustries.com, Cloud Imperium Games has been working diligently over the past 3 years on the development of the game, and now employs over 260 staff in four studios. 2,538 reports, updates and web shows have been made available during this time, and first modules with limited gameplay were offered as early as in fall of 2013 – by now hundreds of thousands of gameplay hours have been played on our servers. The development of the game is proceeding steadily, and a substantial part of the promised game offering dozens of gameplay hours has been made available to the backers in early release versions (see further detail below).

Pursuant to the terms of your agreement (see Sec. 4 of the Commercial Terms, and Sec. IV.A of the subsequent Terms of Service, as applicable, https://robertsspaceindustries.com/tos), your payment was a deposit to be used for the “Game Cost” (as defined therein), and such deposit has since been “earned by CIG and become non-refundable to the extent that it is used for the Game Cost…” You further agreed to “irrevocably waive any claim for refund of any deposit amount that has been used for the Game Cost and Pledge Item Cost in accordance with the above.” The only exception would be a return of unearned funds remaining in case of an abandonment of the project. If you pledged on Kickstarter, you agreed to these terms when you transferred your pledge account to robertsspaceindustries.com.

These terms are consistent with the specific nature of crowdfunding and the foreseeable use of your pledge – we hope you appreciate that we cannot ask our hard working personnel to return some of their salary nor that it would be appropriate to use current backers’ funds provided for game development as a refund for an earlier and committed pledge.

While a substantive part of the promised gameplay is now available, we acknowledge that delivery of some game elements has been delayed due to expansion of Star Citizen’s scope. This expansion is a result of the community’s declared desire to have the initial release version of the game developed to a much greater depth than contemplated originally upon start of the campaign. It is inherent to the nature of crowdfunding that such an adjustment to the project may occur. Ultimately, this will benefit all backers including yourself, since every backer will be receiving a much greater value for his/her pledge, but it may – as in this case – cause an extension of the delivery dates.

We acknowledge that some individual backers may find the additional wait undesirable. However, as per Sec. VII of the ToS, you did “acknowledge and agree that delivery as of such date is not a promise by RSI since unforeseen events may extend the development and/or production time.”

We’d like to point you to the significant gameplay which is now available; https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list and if you haven’t already, we encourage you to download the installer from this url: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/download and patch up to play the latest version of the game.

Star Citizen is a project for gamers, by gamers. Delays and changes are always unfortunate, but in our case they are also one of the reasons the project is so special. By financing the project using crowd funding, our team is not beholden to a publisher who would insist we ship a game unfinished or broken to meet a particular date. Thanks to continued backing of our community, we have the needed creative freedom over the project, to create a unique game, and we feel the results, such as unparalleled immersion and fidelity, are already speaking for themselves!

We sincerely hope you enjoy the updates both current and future in the Star Citizen ‘Verse.

Thank you.
RSI Customer Service Management

I was wondering when I’d get the copy-paste e-mail, took a fair amount of time to be sure.

Electronic Entertainment, Games, Star Citizen

Star Citizen and you

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Star Citizen, another result of nostalgia, together with that abomination Godus that Peter Molyneux vomited forth upon an unsuspecting world.

Now, I have no clue what the hell Wing Commander is, no earthly clue at all, I didn’t have a PC that could actually run anything as fun as video games back in those days.

The damn graphics card had at best sixteen colours, not entirely sure. It has been many a dark and horrible year since.

Now, do you remember the Ouya, that useless little shit box only the mentally deranged could love? Of course you don’t, it was shut down and its intangible assets were devoured by Razor, who wants to make a go at a mini-console themselves.

The Ouya was a kickstarter success, however, as it managed to rake in millions, promising a “revolution” and that it would “save the games”.

“Beware those who promises revolution, because in their hearts, the seek themselves your exploiter.”

Ouya was a miserable failure, it was released, but the end product was such a pile of garbage, not even Notch wanted to touch it, and that crazy Swede sure does want to touch it all.

Now, another contender is reach peak failure cascade, Star Citizen, the largest crowdfunding success in history, one hundred million US dollars, for a video game, designed and managed by a man, who had massive success with video games.

The last of those, from 1997, to bad it’s 2005, and also to bad that Origin Systems was the company who actually made the damn games, Chris Roberts was the designer, but one man does not make games like that, a company does.
Unless that one man is a complete lunatic genius, which Chris Roberts isn’t.

In between the last Wing Commander, Chris Roberts was the designed on Freelancer, which I actually own, and consider an excellent game, because I picked it up years after it was released, randomly, at some bargin bin, published for reasons unknown by Ubisoft, I think, possible Infogrames, who cares?

I dodged all the hype however, and that’s the important bit, without the hype, the promises and all that insanity, Freelancer’s a pretty good game, definitely a classic, but nothing else.

The storyline was a decent little space opera, nothing spectacular, and it was fun exploring all the cool little corners of the game.

So, what did Roberts do in between? He produced movies, as a producer. Good movies? Not really, Lord of War is pretty awesome, the rest are just ever so much meh.

But he caught the smell of the nostalgia trip we’ve seen in the last few years, ever since the success of Tim Schaefers “LET ME MAKE AN ADVENTURE GAME” campaign.

But Nostalgia is a siren song, just because nostalgia tells you something was cool, doesn’t mean it was, Command & Conquer Red Alert was cool, OpenRA isn’t that much fun to play, is it technically the same game? Yes, yes it is, the same game. Nostalgia just ain’t enough to generate a fun experience.

So, Star Citizen, 100 million US dollars, generated based on Nostalgia, with a man at the helm, who has squandered resources before, when he over-promised Freelancer.

So what is the problem with Star Citizen? Many:

1. Lack of transparency, compared to the only other meaningful point of comparison, Frontier Developments (Elite Dangerous), we know what Frontier spend their money on, who went on inside the company, the whole thing, because Frontier is a publicly traded company, and Cloud Imperium is a personal fiefdom of silence and obscurity.
2. Feature Creep, Chris Roberts recently promised the Star Citizen would contain birds.
3. Cult-like community, you know how bad League of Legends community is? Yeah, Star Citizen’s is waaay worse.
4. Sandi Gardiner.
5. General incompetence, to the point that they can’t do a live-stream properly.
6. Terms of Service fuckery, let’s change the TOS several times! That won’t backfire at all, yayz.
7. The sale of in-game assets to fund development.
8. Broken promises, a lot of broken promises.

So, join me over the next few days, as I go through each point, and mercilessly mock authority!

CHRISROBERTS

Games, Reviews

City Builders and you: Cities XXL

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This is what at one point was the VERY first attempt to turn SimCity into an MMO, there is absolutely nothing left of any of the MMO elements in this game, there’s little left of the original concept.

However, there is a city builder left, and with this latest version, there’s a city builder that actually works, and works fairly well. It’s not Cities: Skylines, not even remotely, Skylines is an exceptional game, Cities XXL is a functional game, now at least.

Cities XL and whatever other names it may or may not have carried, where broken shitpiles full of crushed hopes and dreams.

Cities XL was SimCity 2013, before it was even annouced, and EA learned nothing from this miserable pile of failure.

There really isn’t anythint else to say, this game is pointless.

Games, Reviews

Citybuilders and you: Cities Skylines

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So, do you remember SimCity 2013? Did you play it? Really, you paid EA any money? Did you enjoy it?

I see, you are not human, you are obviously a Repteliod from the Lesser Megelanic Cloud, nothing sane on this poluted planet made out of failture and sadness could EVER like SimCity 2013, it was a broken mess made out of Marketing and broken dreams. But it’s water under the bridge now, Maxis has died, SimCity 2013 died with it, and a new successsor has arrived from the shadows of Finland.

Cities Skylines by Colossal Order.

And it is good, and I mean it, really, really, really, sodding good.

2015-03-11_00006

It’s SimCity 2013, but it works.

It still uses those agents that SimCity was raving on about for waaaay to long, but only where it makes sense, water and eletricity? Not FUCKING agents, just the logical system of just making sure you have enough of A,B & Z. Nothing special.

Agents are the people who live and work in the city, the various service agents (Police, Fire-service, busses, trains, planes, ships, hearses and ambulances) and that’s it. And you’re little people walking around? They have a home, that’s theirs, they have a workplace, that’s also theirs and they will go to a place of amusement some random crap place.

Unlike SimCity, where the agents would go to the first avaliable house, the first avaliable workplace and not give a shit, if some uneducated yokel from the fucking sticks began working at the Nuclear Power Planet, turns out, Homer Simpson would be a disater for any Nuclear facility outside of cartoons, even in the superbly unrealistic dreamworld of video games, it’s a disaster.

Not in Cities: Skylights, it just doesn’t happen.

2015-03-13_00002

And to add a bit more joy, they developer have realeased an expansion, that added a bunch of cool stuff, plenty of free content patches, active dialogue with their customers and remain a happy little team.

All in all, the best City-Builder since SimCity 4. Well cone random little company.

You can, and you should, get it on Steam, with full workshop support, and 20000 random crap items for you to play with.

Games

Elder Scrolls Online, a big fat cauldron of not very good.

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Elder Scrolls Online, who I imagine got greenlight ages ago, when the concept of a “World of Warcraft” killer was still imaginatively relevant, unfortunately, that concept went out the windows somewhere around Star Wars the Old Republic and that useless Conan game. Sadly for Zenimax, Bethesda and people who actually like the Elder Scrolls universe (Spoiler Alert: I love the Elder Scrolls Universe, crazy dwemer lore and all), this game just isn’t that good.

It’s by no means bad, it just isn’t very good, mediocre in so many ways, outright bad in other ways, pretty good in some ways, now, allow me to explain, before you start screaming at the monitor. (Spoiler Alert: No one will actually do that).

Screenshot_20150810_232532

So, let’s start with the classes, of which there are four, Templar (Healer), Dragonknight (Fire), Nightblade (Fuck off) and Sorcerer, pay attention to the last class, which doesn’t have a fancy name at all, this will be explained later on, so don’t worry.

Now, the first three classes usually use meele weapons, so they are up close and personal with the enemies, hitting them with swords, hammers, maces and all the good stuff, but the amount of weapons skills are limited, as your weapon adds five extra active skills you can use, alongside your class skills.

Which sounds cool, until I tell you there are the following categories: Two-handed, One+Shield and Dual Wielding. Is there are tree for daggers? Hahaha, fuck off no. Can you then really sneak around and stab people? Sure, EVERYONE can, not that it matters, the stealth system doesn’t really make any sense anyway.

The other weapons are Bows, Destruction Staff and Healing staffs.

Screenshot_20150810_231249

now, meele is still fun, you’re there hitting shit in the face, no fancy stuff, just up close and personal, you can easily keep up with the “BLOCK NOW” telegrams the enemy sends you, and note here, THE enemy, I haven’t been able to really engage several mobs in any meaningful way, not even as a sorcerer.

So it’s almost always one-on-one, still, meele feels nice and punchy, so that’s always something.

The Archery is pretty good, if unremarkably, and works pretty much as a Magic staff, just much, MUCH better.

Because Magic is absolutely bollocks, and staggeringly so. In pretty much all of Elder Scrolls, I would go buy some spells, or start with a handful, and start vomiting forth fire from the palms of my hands, like some deranged psyker straight out of Warhammer 40k, hurling around fire and death with my clenched fists. Awesome fun in Morrowind with it’s utterly broken magic system, decent in Oblivion and after a bit of PC Master Race modding, awesome power in Skyrim. The one thing in common, staffs where and optional extra, used only sometimes, you where the weapon.

Does the Sorcerer do that in ESO? Nope, you have to use staffs, and they aren’t very good, don’t feel right, and really don’t work in any ranged confrontation. I’d usually just be mudered by angry arsehole running into my face. So fireballs for me.

Screenshot_20150810_232513

So, the classes aren’t very good, what about the quests? Mediocre at best my friends. Standard at worst, horrible at nightmares.

The main quest line is so relentlessly predictable it’s not even funny, excellent voice actors for the “Main” story characters, pretty eh for everyone else.

There are a handful of “dynamic” events, but they are pale shades compared to the mediocre servings from Warlords of Dreanor, and are utterly irredemable compared to Guild Wars Two’s brilliant event systems.

Screenshot_20150810_232432

Adding in a generally ugly game, without the glorious insanity of Morrowing or the vast Scandinavian style of Skyrim, it all just looks like Oblivion, which, let’s be honest, was boring as all fuck to actually look at.

Add in some insane and utterly randon loading times, and you have good times for absolutely nothing sane on this fair world, other than maniacs who like to masturbate to loading screens.

Screenshot_20150810_232336

Which brings us anything but neatly, to the final horror: PvP.

This game has been advertised aimed towards a PvP angle, with it’s massive central battleground, where the three great faction compete for domination, sounds cool doesn’t it? It probably would be, if I had even the faintest idea where the fuck I had to go, or do, and when I finally randomly stumbled upon a Keep under siege, I was murdered within seconds, WITH NO WAY TO GET BACK TO THE FIGHT.

I cannot even understand that, I respawn a full keep further back, so far away from the frontlines, that by the time I would reach the keep on foot (Horses are either expensive monsters or stuff you buy from the in-game store), the battle would be over, who the fuck things that’s a good idea?

The PvP map was enourmous anyway, way to large for the limited players present, a map that size would need to have several thousands of players, to work even just a little.

A little while after my quick demise, I found myself, randomly again because the map was goddamn useless as an indicator of action, in a keep under siege, well, I say siege, two enemy players where attacking the main gate.

Guess what? They could kill all of use so quickly it wasn’t funny, not even a little, I did notice that one of them used the “Former Empress” title, which I belive is pretty much the End Game PvP title.

So yeah, that was fun.

A small story here people, I, like many, played World of Warcraft in vanilla, and I, fool that I was, levelled a Dwarf Paladin, all the way to level 60, and guess what? I got fucking tired of being ganked TEN years ago, and fuck that shit, it’s not fun for anyone, other then deranged little fuckers with power fantasies.

Screenshot_20150810_232049

In Conclustion: Buy Guild Wars 2 instead, more content, more fun, more everything, this MMO will die at some point, and nothing will be lost.

This game should never have been, and probably will fade away at some point.

Music

David Cameron won!

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David Cameron (331) has won. And the world is poorer for it, we’ll have another five years where every time anything remotely big international event, that man and his ugly massive forehead and posh accent, will cause pain and misery for millions.

And yet again, we have to suffer through another five years of vague nationalism, fear and loathing in Londontown and Boris Johnson being sadly relevant.

And the entire thing is being portrayed like some great heroic feat from David Cameron, and yet, it isn’t.
England, and note here, not the rest of the UK, not Scotland, not Wales or for that matter Northern Ireland, has a lovely divide between the north and the south, and cities and countryside.

In the North, Labour (232) still has a leftover residual “Party of the Workers” left, and cities have always been more left-wing, turns out when you live next to everyone else in crumbling cities made of concrete and idiocy, you tend to vote leftish, wonder why, could be the constant human contact, and the understanding that not all humans are out to murder you with sticks.

Whereas in the countryside? Hot damn, fuck my neighbor, I’ve got my shit straight.

Fucking Conservatives.

So why did Labour fail so utterly miserably? Because they had no policies, no charisma, not a fucking gram of purpose, they simply send some unlikable arsehat out on stage, and hoped for the best.

Surprise, surprise, didn’t fucking work at all.

Ed Milliband even looks like David Cameron, the people of England where basically given a choice between one goofy looking fucker you know, and one goofy looking fucker you don’t know.

What a choice, eh?

So David Cameron won, because Labour are useless shitlords, who have absolutely no clue what they are doing, none whatsoever, completely lost in the forest of dicks and strawberries.

As for the Liberal Democrats (8)? If someone out there, are surprised that they lost utterly and completely, then please contact me, I’d like to sell you the Great Belt Bridge, because you are definitely a gullible fool, and I look forward to abuse that for fun and even more fun.

And even had such high hopes for the Lib Dems, and they squandered all of it, they should have insist on the proportional electoral reform, and not whatever forsaken compromise was spewed forth.

Hell, Conservative would STILL have won, they’d have to do a coalition, but they’d been the senior partner.
As for Scotland? They voted no to independence, that time, but they sure as fuck voted yes to independence this time around, of the 59 seats reserved for Scotland, 56 where won by the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), that’s a higher vote than then President of Kazakhstan got, and he’s a brutal post-soviet central Asian dictator, and he had to use all the fascist powers at his disposal to get that.

Nicola Sturgeon got it by the revolutionary way, of not being complete shit. SNP are actual Social Democrats, wanting to go with the Scandinavian model, they have an ideology, beside Scottish Independence. And it turns out, that everyone else are giant bastards towards the Scottish, how we weep for them all.

I expect to see another vote for Scottish Independence within the next few years, hopefully, this time the people of Scotland will realize, that they have nothing to fear.

As for the rest of the seats? Oh who cares, some seats that Sein Fein won some, and won’t take, out of some ancient reason, no one outside of Northern Ireland still cares about.

Other arseholes won the rest, who cares.

One did go to the Green Party, well done there.

So now, another five years with David Cameron, unless his party continues their proud tradition, and brutally backstabs him, metaphorically speaking, probably.

David_Cameron_official

LOOK AT HIM! AHHAHAHAHA! FUCK YOU!

Culture, Electronic Entertainment

Today, I’ll write about art

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Amber Coal is obviously a complete lunatic, sadly, that’s absolutely nothing special at all. With the Internet being a giant echo chamber of idiocy, lunatics and maniacs have an awesome time on it. I mean, who’s going to notice yet another mad hatter in an ocean of silly hats.

It’s neither unusual or peculiar.

And doesn’t actually matter, Lunatics often produced some brilliant stuff, the border between genius and madness is pretty often shattered, so no worries!

Let’s just barrel into whatever games Amber has managed to vomit forth upon us all.

IwhatA Game of Cat and Mouse for example, isn’t a game, but is absolutely performance art, interactive performance art, but not a game, it sadly lacks an active objective for the player to actually do, it’s message about entropy isn’t really anything spectacular, if I needed a remind about the terminal heat death of the universe, I’d go watch Nicki Minaj videos.

And burn out my own optical nerves, just to manage the pain you see.

Still, should probably try another one of the creatures deranged games:

UFOHNO, yeah.

UFONO

Yes, we get it, you’re trying to tell us something. But the message “Not everything is what you see” is so old, that I’ve encountered them reading my way through roman graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, it’s old news sweetie, you’re not suprising anyone.

So what if I use a mind control ray to force owls to land on the ground, and then be devoured by violently agreesive rabbits?

Well done, I get the message, it’s all about control and doing crazy shit, well done, now go play Bioshock instead, it tells pretty much the same message, just wrapped in a really good game.

Or play Spec Ops: The Line, which messes around with halucinations to get the same effect, while also being incredibly good.

Or I could look at shitty pixel games with simple messages, choices, choices, so many choices.

Fortunately, they belong to me, not to you.

Electronic Entertainment, Games

Maxis has died a disgraceful death.

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Maxis is dead.

The old developer behind the SimCity franchise, Spore and the Sims, is no more. It has ceased to be. It has gone and joined Westwood and Bullfrog in Light entertainment heaven.

But, before you let the floods of tears overwhelm your own sanity, to remember just one thing.

Maxis died years ago, all that we wave goodbye to today, was a shallow sad little shell, all the talent and wonder that produced the great games of yesterday, have long gone away.

Will Wirght, creator of Simcity, Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000 and Spore, have gone of to do fuck knows what, nothing game related at least.

The last thing released by Maxis, was Simcity 4, one of the best Citybuilders EVER released, after that, all that Maxis have done is more versions of the Sims, esssentially copying itself every two years or so.

And most of the Sims’s activities was tranfered into another studio entirely years ago, as for Simcity 2013?

Wasn’t made by Maxis, it was made by EA, and their diabolical marketing and financial department. Nothing about Simcity 2013 is worth anything.

So worry not my brothers, Maxis died years ago, today, we simply dump the rotting corpse into a shallow grave, where it should have been dumped years ago.

Luck Cities Skylines looks good, eh?

Culture, Politics

The many kinds of Healthcare

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Affordable-Health-Care-Plans

So yeah, there are more than one alternative to handle Healthcare in a country, and most of them have a bunch of hybrid solution that blends elements of them all.

So let’s run through the three “pure” ways of handling healthcare in a nation:

Universal government owned healthcare:

This is the one the American Republicans would call “Socialist”, it’s fairly straightforward, the state has every citizen in a giant database, you show up at your local hospital through either a doctor, an accident or the emergency room.

You get treated, it costs you absolutely nothing, it’s paid collectively through the taxes everyone pays. Fairly straightforward, this is the basic model used in the Scandinavian countries and to a degree Great Britain through the NHS.

It does carry a fairly large bill and depending on the nature of the system, a potential waiting list and inefficiency.

But people don’t die in the streets, or at home, generally.

Government owned, mandated or heavily legislated Healthcare insurance.

This is the method used in German and Japan, among others, it’s also fairly simple. It’s a system based on private or public hospitals, who get paid through either government run health insurance companies or private companies that often operate in a sort of cooperative method, i.e. mostly non-profit or mandated not to produce larger profits than some legislative limit.

It generally works, in Germany your job actually pays to private non-profit companies, and if you lose your job? Off to the government subsidy, so people, you know, don’t die in the gutter and other such uncivilized stuff.

I gave an example on the Japanese system in yesterdays update, it does seem to have some problems actually paying enough to the healthcare companies and doctors.

The anarchy model, no control, limited or no government intervention.

Note, that I refrain from using laissez faire, because this model sucks. This is the model most commonly used in dirt poor African and Asian nations, it’s absolutely horrible and mandates that the poor have to make use of local clinics, often funded by who knows what, and old traditional methods.

It’s also the American model, just with an actual healthcare system present, completely run through the medium of private for-profit virtually unregulated healthcare insurance companies, which is why the most common reason for bankruptcy in America, is medical bills.

It, as we have seen in the US, doesn’t work at all, even with the American patchwork programs of Medicare and Medicaid, who are only directed towards those below or just above some Federal Poverty limit, which is a problem when lots of people lose their jobs, and thus their healthcare insurance, and for when the profiteering companies decided to go “Ha ha, fuck you” and dump you for the old insurance “Act of God” bullshit.

Hybrids?

Shit, there’s tons of hybrid solutions, the Universal Government Healthcare often has possibilities for the rich and resource wealthy to simply skip the entire public waiting list and emergency room and just check into one of the many private hospitals and recently, in Denmark at least, some companies hand out private insurance as a little additional to their crucial employees, insures that they get them back to work faster and more efficiently, it’s also often used to just everyone, to draw people to the company.

Not in these days with crisis of course.

The second option is really a hybrid already.

Now for the American/Dirt poor country method? Perhaps some sort of Government Non-profit Health Insurance company to provide some proper competition to large Insurance companies who really only benefit people with a job or their shareholders or their CEOs.

Or perhaps a shift into the second model, and regulated the shit out of an area that always should have been heavily legislated.